The present invention relates to a porous structure used in inter-fluid contact equipment to achieve contact between gases, between liquids or between gas and liquid, for various industrial purposes, such as packed towers for distillation, absorption, cooling and stripping. The invention further relates to a porous structure used for contact between fluid and catalyst.
In the art of such inter-fluid or fluid-catalyst contactors for various industrial applications, different types of packings have been used to fill towers or columns for intended chemical processings. These packings, which are made of ceramics, glass, synthetic resin or metal, are dumped into a tower in random or in an irregular fashion in the form of beads, pellets, rings (cylinders), sheets, and so forth. Alternatively, the packings are arranged in the tower in a regular or stacked fashion in the form of grids or honeycombs. Although the irregular dumping method permits easy filling of the tower with the packings, it suffers a loss of pressure of the fluids flowing through the irregularly dumped packings. In view of this inconvenience, regularly stacked packings in the form of grids, honeycombs, etc. have been dominantly used in recent years, for minimum pressure loss of the fluids, notwithstanding comparatively time-consuming filling of the tower with such regularly stacked packings.
In the case where a tower is filled with known regularly stacked packings of a grid or honeycomb type, it is a common practice that the fluid flow channels formed through the packings are generally oriented substantially in parallel to the line of flow of the fluid through the tower. As a result, the pressure loss encountered with this regular arrangement is less than that experienced on pellet-type packings or other irregularly dumped packings. However, the stacked packings suffer a relatively low frequency of collision between liquid and gas, which results in a local blow or channelling of the gas without contacting the liquid, thus reducing the liquid-gas contact efficiency.
Similar inconveniences are also experienced in the case where such packings are used to fill a tower through which a gas or liquid is caused to flow for contact with a catalyst supported on the packings, in order to catalyze such a fluid during its flow through the tower.